Dear NCLaw441,
"Would you vote for Hillary, or essentially do so by not voting at all, if Giuliani were to be the candidate?"
No, I wouldn't vote for Mrs. Clinton. However, not voting for Mr. Giuliani is not the same as voting for Mrs. Clinton. It is not voting for Mr. Giuliani. In terms of the actual arithmetic of an election, although failing to vote for Mr. Giuliani would aid Mrs. Clinton, it wouldn't assist her as much as an actual vote for Mrs. Clinton.
However, that really all misses the point. The point is that if Mr. Giuliani is nominated by the Republican Party, a significant portion of the Republican coalition will be effectively disenfranchised in that the two candidates will be virtually indistinguishable on the issues that matter most to social conservatives. We will have already lost the election.
It would be different if the party wished to nominate someone who wasn't especially good on the primary social conservative issues. Someone like Sen. Allen, who appears to be in favor of overturning Roe, but who is not really all that pro-life, or someone like Sen. McCain, who may not be entirely sincere about our issues, would be acceptable, at least to me. We'd be getting a half loaf, or at least some significant part of the loaf that mattered to us. That's called compromise, settling for someone who isn't ideal, but who gives you some of what you want.
In Mr. Giuliani, however, we have the ideal candidate to drive away social conservatives. He's pro-abortion, including pro-partial birth abortion, pro-government-paid abortion, etc. He's pro-homosexual marriage, pro-homosexual adoption. He's very anti-RBKA (an important matter to many social conservatives). Furthermore, he's shown antipathy to other parts of the conservative platform, especially tax cuts. He loudly endorsed Mr. Cuomo over Mr. Pataki, and that's at a time when Mr. Pataki was behaving like a genuine budget-cutting conservative.
With Mr. Giuliani, we social conservatives not only don't get a half loaf, or even a slice, but not even a crumb. And we can hardly console ourselves that at least he's on board with the rest of the conservative agenda. With Mr. Giuliani, we essentially get someone who is a thorough-going liberal on every issue except the war.
I'm sorry, that's just not enough for my vote. If the rest of the party insists on a candidate that is absolutely unacceptable to a large group belonging to the party's coalition, then the party must expect to lose a significant percentage of that group.
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Thank you for your detailed and courteous reply. I certainly won't quarrel with you regarding Giuliani's conservative bona fides, or lack thereof, at least not for the purpose of this discussion. I do disagree about not voting for a candidate being practically any different than voting for the opponent. We have lived through presidential elections in which it was clear that every vote counts, and may be decisive.
Seldom have I voted for a candidate that meets all of MY qualifications. I do not typically vote solely on the basis of party affiliation, but will do so when I don't have enough information about the candidate, or when the two candidates seem otherwise indistinguishable from each other. I tend to prioritize my issues, and vote for the candidate who best appears (I have been fooled more than once by false promises) to embrace my highest priorities better than the other candidate(s). Unless I am utterly without a clue, I never fail to vote for whom I believe to be the better candidate, even if neither candidate is truly worthy of a vote. This method may not be totally honorable, but if I thought that my vote, or failure to vote, might decide an election, especially one in which any Clinton was running, and I failed to vote... well, let's not imagine that. I even voted for Dole in '96, when few thought there was much chance he would win (although he did get NC, as I recall).
Thank you again for your response, which I shall review again after posting this.